got done with the mass some time ago;—and here it is again! ‘A Pape, a Pape!’ cried others: ‘Stane him!’[1]—In fact the service could not go on at all. This passed in St. Giles’s Kirk, Edinburgh, on Sunday 23d July 1637. Scotland had endured much in the bishop way for above thirty years bygone, and endeavoured to say nothing, bitterly feeling a great deal. But now, on small signal, the hour was come. All Edinburgh, all Scotland, and behind that all England and Ireland, rose into unappeasable commotion on the flight of this stool of Jenny’s; and his Grace of Canterbury, and King Charles himself, and many others had lost their heads before there could be peace again. The Scotch People had sworn their Covenant, not without ‘tears’; and were in these very days of October 1638, while Oliver is writing at Ely, busy with their whole might electing their General Assembly, to meet at Glasgow next month. I think the Tulchan Apparatus is likely to be somewhat sharply dealt with, the Cow having become awake to it! Great events are in the wind; out of Scotland vague news, of unappeasable commotion risen there.
In the end of that same year, too, there had risen all over England huge rumour concerning the Shipmoney Trial at London. On the 6th of November 1637, this important Process of Mr. Hampden’s began. Learned Mr. St. John, a dark tough man, of the toughness of leather, spake with irrefragable law-eloquence, law-logic, for three days running,
- ↑ Rushworth, Kennet, Balfour.
first that contains the Continuation; they follow as here in all the others. Thought to be the first grave mention of Jenny Geddes in Printed History; a heroine still familiar to Tradition everywhere in Scotland.
In a foolish Pamphlet, printed in 1661, entitled Edinburgh’s Joy, etc.,—Joy for the Blessed Restoration and Annus Mirabilis,—there is mention made of ‘the immortal Jenet Geddis,’ whom the writer represents as rejoicing exceedingly in that miraculous event; she seems to be a well-known person, keeping ‘a cabbage-stall at the Tron Kirk,’ at that date. Burns, in his Highland Tour, named his mare Jenny Geddes. Helen of Troy, for practical importance in Human History, is but a small Heroine to Jenny:—but she has been luckier in the recording!—For these bibliographical notices I am indebted to the friendliness of Mr. David Laing, of the Signet Library, Edinburgh.
